The present invention relates to power actuator arrangements and in particular power actuator arrangements for providing a child safety on/off feature, a lock/unlock feature or a superlock/unsuperlock feature on a car door latch.
When known power actuator arrangements are used for locking and unlocking of a vehicle door latch, a provision is made for manual override. Thus a vehicle door latch which has been power unlocked by a central door locking system can subsequently be manually locked by the driver depressing a cill button or the like. Under such circumstances the cill button preferably has to be provided with a detent position to ensure that the cill button stays in either a filly raised or fully lowered position and not in a midway position. Under such circumstances the motor of the power actuator arrangement has to be powerful enough to not only drive the latch mechanism between lock and unlock but also has to overcome the detent forces.
In particular the detent forces have to be sufficiently high to provide a good tactile feel and also to ensure that inertia forces resulting from a road traffic accident do not overcome the detent forces and change the state of the lock.
Thus according to the present invention there is provided a power actuator arrangement including a power drive assembly having a first powered position and a second powered position and an output means, the output means being moveable by the power drive assembly between a first detent position corresponding to the first powered position and a second detent position corresponding to the second powered position following powered operation, the output means being retained in the first or second detent positions by a detent bias force provided by a detent arrangement, the output means being independently moveable by a independent force between the first and second detent positions, the independent force acting to overcome the detent bias force such that during independent movement the independent force substantially does not act to move the power drive assembly between its first powered and second powered positions.
According to a further aspect of the present invention there is provided a power actuator arrangement including a power drive assembly and an output means, the output means being movable by the power drive assembly between first and second positions and being independently movable by an independent force between the first and second positions such that the first and second positions are detent position and during independent movement between the first and second positions the independent force has to overcome a detent force in which the power drive assembly has to overcome a reduced detent force when moving the output means between the first and second positions.
These and other features of the present invention will be best understood from the following specification and drawings.